The Christian life a feast? It is more usually represented as a
fight, a wrestle, a race; and such metaphors correspond, as it would
appear, far more closely to the facts of our environment, and to the
experiences of our hearts, than does such a metaphor as this. But the
metaphor of the festival goes deeper than that of the fight or race,
and it does not ignore the strenuous and militant side of the
Christian life. No man ever lived a more strenuous life than Paul; no
man had heavier tasks, and did them more cheerily; no man had a
sterner fight and fought it more bravely. There is nothing soft,
Epicurean, or oblivious of the patent sad facts of humanity in the
declaration that after all, beneath all, above all, central to all,
the Christian life is a glad festival, when it is the life that it
ought to be.
But you say, 'Ah! it is all very well to call it so; but in the first
place, continual joy is impossible in the presence of the
difficulties, and often sadnesses, that meet us on our life's path;
and, in the second place, it is folly to tell us to pump up emotions,
or to ignore the occasions for much heaviness and sorrow of heart.'
True; but, still, it is possible to cultivate such a temper as makes
life habitually joyful. We can choose the aspect under which we by
preference and habitually regard our lives. All emotion follows upon
a preceding thought, or sensible experience, and we can pick the
objects of our thoughts, and determine what aspect of our lives to
look at most.
The sky is often piled with stormy, heaped-up masses of blackness,
but between them are lakes of calm blue. We can choose whether we
look at the clouds or at the blue. _These_ are in the lower
ranges; _that_ fills infinite spaces, upwards and out to the
horizon. These are transient, eating themselves away even whilst we
look, and black and thunderous as they may be, they are there but for
a moment--that is perennial. If we are wise, we shall fix our gaze
much rather on the blue than on the ugly cloud-rack that hides it,
and thus shall minister to ourselves occasions for the noble kind of
joy which is not noisy and boisterous, 'like the crackling of thorns
under a pot,' and does not foam itself away by its very ebullience,
but is calm like the grounds of it; still, like the heaven to which
it looks; eternal, like the God on whom it is fastened. If we would
only steadfastly remember that the one source of worthy and enduring
joy is God Himself, and listen to the command, 'Rejoice in the Lord,'
we should find it possible to 'rejoice always.' For that thought of
Him, His sufficiency, His nearness, His encompassing presence, His
prospering eye, His aiding hand, His gentle consolation, His enabling
help will take the sting out of even the bitterest of our sorrows,
and will brace us to sustain the heaviest, otherwise crushing
burdens, and greatly to 'rejoice, though now for a season we are in
heaviness through manifold temptations.' The Gulf Stream rushes into
the northern hemisphere, melts the icebergs and warms the Polar seas,
and so the joy of the Lord, if we set it before us as we can and
should do, will minister to us a gladness which will make our lives a
perpetual feast.
But there is another thing that we can do; that is, we can clearly
recognise the occasions for sorrow in our experience, and yet
interpret them by the truths of the Christian faith. That is to say,
we can think of them, not so much as they tend to make us sad or
glad, but as they tend to make us more assured of our possession of,
more ardent in our love towards, and more submissive in our attitude
to, the all-ordering Love which is God. Brethren, if we thought of
life, and all its incidents, even when these are darkest and most
threatening, as being what it and they indeed are, His training of us
into capacity for fuller blessedness, because fuller possession of
Himself, we should be less startled at the commandment, 'Rejoice in
the Lord always,' and should feel that it was possible, though the
figtree did not blossom, and there was no fruit in the vine, though
the flocks were cut off from the pastures, and the herds from the
stall, yet to rejoice in the God of our salvation. Rightly understood
and pondered on, all the darkest passages of life are but like the
cloud whose blackness determines the brightness of the rainbow on its
front. Rightly understood and reflected on, these will teach us that
the paradoxical commandment, 'Count it all joy that ye fall into
divers temptations,' is, after all, the voice of true wisdom speaking
at the dictation of a clear-eyed faith.
This text, since it is a commandment, implies that obedience to it,
and therefore the realisation of this continual festal aspect of
life, is very largely in our own power. Dispositions differ, some of
us are constitutionally inclined to look at the blacker, and some at
the brighter, side of our experiences. But our Christianity is worth
little unless it can modify, and to some extent change, our natural
tendencies. The joy of the Lord being our strength, the cultivation
of joy in the Lord is largely our duty. Christian people do not
sufficiently recognise that it is as incumbent on them to seek after
this continual fountain of calm and heavenly joy flowing through
their lives, as it is to cultivate some of the more recognised
virtues and graces of Christian conduct and character.